


My Good Woman I Am Quite Certain That I Have Never Laid Eyes On You Before In My Life

by HideousBlob



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: 50 Ways To Die, About to Die, All of the death, Assisted Suicide, Cannibalism, Character Death, Death, Fire, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, POV Second Person, So much death, This Is Basically 2000ish Words Of Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HideousBlob/pseuds/HideousBlob
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The daydream was vivid and almost involuntary, as if you aren’t imagining what might happen but involuntarily recalling a gruesome incident. You have read Freud’s works and briefly wonder if you were really burned as a child and have repressed the memory- but you would be, at the very least, badly disfigured by so much fire if that event had really happened, and you aren’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Good Woman I Am Quite Certain That I Have Never Laid Eyes On You Before In My Life

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Wilson mentions unconscious repression of memory, which is now considered a phenomenon that is dubious at best- but he doesn’t know that in 1920-ish. Also this is my first fic for the game. And I have not actually won this game, so I don't know how it ends, so this piece may contradict canon somewhat in places. Because of that, this fic contains no spoilers for the game's ending...
> 
> Also, I've poked around this section a little bit and the basic idea here has been done before, but with quite different execution so I feel reasonably comfortable posting this anyway. I wrote the story before I looked at others in the section so any similarities to other works are a result of parallel thought and not intentional plagiarism.

The sun is setting and that is not exactly a good thing but your fire is high and your surroundings seem normal- almost deceptively so. If you didn’t know better, you’d think these were ordinary woods of the kind that you’ve hunted for specimens in dozens of times. In fact, looking at your crackling fire, it’s so easy to believe that none of this is real. It’s in your mind. There are no such thing as monsters and you’re simply feeling the strain of being kidnapped and abandoned in the woods by a lunatic.

No, that’s not true. You feel the slowly healing wound in your left palm with the tip of your thumb. You know what you did. 

Rather impressive, really, with the right perspective. Not many people have built what you’ve built. Given the chance, you don’t think you’d do it again, but the fact remains.

There’s a carrot roasting over the fire and you have five more of them in your backpack. Back home you would buy groceries whenever you needed them and they would appear. You never realized with such staggering clarity how much food and how many resources you actually consume in a day. Is this normal? Is this simply the cost of maintaining a human being, or are you somehow-

Then something hits you. It’s huge and heavy, it is probably a spider, you are going to die.

Where is your ax? You left it on the other side of the fire! Why? You should have-

Is that a human face?

"You’re not Maxwell," the face says.

You are pinned and cannot run and so the adrenaline in your blood goes to your fist, but she’s already pulled away. Oh, and she’s a woman. You don’t brawl with women. You’re not going to brawl with the only other human being for miles, man or woman or otherwise. You don’t brawl at all. You don’t like brawling. You don’t like risking head trauma.

Who is she? Why is she out here? 

She said “Maxwell”. It is obvious why she’s out here. You really should have known that the moment you saw her.

She seems wary, probably because she noticed that you wanted to hit her.

You have gotten ash on your clothes. You brush it off but you can’t do anything about your unkempt beard. 

It’s been a very long time since you addressed another human being. How do you start?

You must have taken too long- she’s started. “You have a fire!”

"Yes, I built that fire pit myself."

She sits very close to it. 

"That doesn’t look safe," you say aloud, not to warn her exactly but because you’ve gotten into the habit of thinking aloud. You’re sure she knows basic fire safety and doesn’t need you pointing these things out…

She doesn’t acknowledge what you’ve said. “How long have you been out here?”

She’s eyeing your science machine. “It analyzes things I find and tells me what I can make from them,” you tell her. “I built it myself! I’m a scientist.” 

"Okay, that’s nice. So you’ve been here a while?"

You haven’t been marking the days, which now strikes you as an error on your part, but you don’t think it’s been too long. 

Why is she so close to the fire? That really seems dangerous…

_It’s caught on to your clothing and your hair. You roll on the ground, that’s supposed to be the right thing to do but the grass is dry and now the ground is also on fire. The heat is powerful. You don’t feel pain, however- you think you may be in shock._

You rub your temples. The daydream was vivid and almost involuntary, as if you aren’t imagining what might happen but involuntarily recalling a gruesome incident. You have read Freud’s works and briefly wonder if you were really burned as a child and have repressed the memory- but you would be, at the very least, badly disfigured by so much fire if that event had really happened, and you aren’t.

The woman sitting at your fire pulls out some berries and starts to heat them. You haven’t found berries in so long. You clinically note your rush of animal envy. Is this how you react to finding another of your species? First you fear her, then you want to hit her, and now you want to take her food? You’re going to have to shape up here.

And you still haven’t answered her question. You haven’t been here long. The cut on your palm is still not quite healed, even though the other cut on your other hand from when you slipped with your ax on your first day in the woods has nearly vanished. 

The fire is getting low.

_It’s gone out._

_Your breathing has gone shallow and there is a tense feeling of suspension in your vital organs. Logically, you know that there is nothing out there in the dark that wasn’t there in the light and that dawn will soon come, but…_

_A twig snaps. “What was that?” you sputter aloud, which was a mistake because now it knows where you are-_

Enough of the morbid daydreams. This woman is still waiting for you to answer her question. “It’s been six days,” you say.

She nods. She’s built up the fire while you were lost in thought.

Oh. She’s built up the fire, with her own wood, so she must be planning to stay near you for a little while at least. Well, of course she is. You’re the only two human beings here. Unless you aren’t. You thought it was just you before today, after all.

"What’s your name?" you ask.

"Willow." It suits her. You think of charcoal. You used to sketch with willow charcoal. You haven’t had time for it in a while.

"My name is Wilson P. Higgsbury. Here, my-" Oh, right. You don’t have your business cards. Actually, a few days ago you had a regrettable lapse of clarity and ate them. You will not share that information.

She doesn’t need your business card anyway. What’s she going to do with it, send you a telegram?

She seems tense. You must seem crazed. What with your beard, and all. 

"I start fires," she says.

Sure. So do you, now. “I started this fire.”

"We could team up," she says. "I know where the berry bushes are."

"Yes, of course!" You almost offer to shake on it but when you extend your hand you remember the cut and- wait, why were you going to offer her your left hand? Blast it all, she… she’s also using her left hand? She’s using her left hand to eat her berries.

Is this place a purgatory for the left-handed? You tried to switch, you really did-

Wait. That is an absurd idea.

But now you know why the cut on your left palm is so slow to heal. Out here you’ve reverted to your innate handedness, using your left hand a great deal more than you normally do, carrying your ax in it and such, and in moments of panic you have been ripping the wound back open and not even noticing. There’s certainly nothing supernatural about that cut.

You previously dropped the carrot you were roasting when she attacked you. You wonder if it’s still good… it’s just a little ashy….

_There’s been nothing to eat for days. Nothing but this disgusting blue hunk of what you can’t really call meat._

_It’s fascinating in some ways, what lack of food will do do the human body, but you’re about done with it. So blue almost-meat it is._

_You’ve made the wrong decision._

You lived alone for years.

That may be an understatement. Lots of people live alone. It’s not unusual for a man in his 30s not to have a spouse or a roommate, but you went a little farther than that. You bought the house out in the woods first. Then you put up the fence. Then you put up the signs, when it became a game for children to run up to your house and touch it- you don’t understand children. You don’t understand why they  _always_ think it’s funny when you get angry. You were terrified of adults when you were a child, but you’re digressing.

You had food delivered and left on the step because you were too busy to go out… it wasn’t because you didn’t want to see human faces… you didn’t call repairmen because you didn’t want to be disrupted, that was all… you weren’t really a recluse, you were just busy. And on the verge of a breakthrough.

The point is, it’s been much longer than six days since you had a conversation.

Willow has a lighter. She’s flicking it. She gives you such a feeling of familiarity. Almost beyond that of just finding another human being in a sea of monstrosities. You don’t feel as though you’re sitting with a stranger. Has being out here removed some of your social inhibitions? You don’t think that’s it…

_She’s not getting up. She’s in the mud, and she hates mud. There is a spot of red at her temple._

_Wolfgang dares to drag you away like you’re just having a tantrum. Doesn’t he get it? You can bring her back if they’ll just let you go. None of them will let you go because they are common plebian fools and circus freaks._

_But they don’t have your brilliant mind! You pretend contrition, say you understand, and they untie you so you can help with the fire- then you run onto the marsh, of course._

_You find her, you begin to drag her back, and then the alien thing rears up before you._

_You might have been fast enough if you hadn’t spent so much fruitless time being confined and having to forego eating in favor of planning your escape._

_The spikes whip out and drive your shrunken, empty stomach into your spine. You collapse and it retreats, which seems like a sign in your favor until you realize it left because it is finished killing you._

_Why… there isn’t enough left of her to revive… and even if there was, you don’t have the right materials. The others were right after all. You haven’t been using any logic whatsoever! You would apologize if you could, but you can’t now, you won’t be making it back to camp._

_Her lighter is still in her pocket. You ease it out. Normally you wouldn’t dream of touching her most prized possession, but you’ll both be dead soon, and you believe she would like to be cremated._

Willow is looking at you strangely. You find you have been rocking and holding your head. It hurts.

You pull your hands away. You desperately want to know how she got here, but if you ask, she may ask you how  _you_ got here. You run your thumb over the cut in your palm again.

That’s another reason why it hasn’t healed, you keep toying with it. You need to stop, you can’t let it get infected. 

Any sort of pride you had in the machine that brought you here somehow dissipated when you realized someone else was here, living on berries. You are completely certain that the machine you built only brought you here. It only could have brought you here. No one has come to your laboratory since 1918.

You desperately need sleep.

Willow has built up the fire a bit more while you were preoccupied. She’s gone a bit too far, the fire is very large. Is she new at this? But she told you she’d started fires before…

Well, it’s contained in the fire pit and it’s good to keep the darkness at bay.

You pull out your straw roll and lay it out where sparks won’t reach it. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” you say, because Willow is watching you and you just remembered that if you’re working together you need to communicate what you’re doing.

"Good night." She throws another log on the fire although it does not need one. You lie down.

_You sit up and automatically take account of the others. You see only Wendy, spectral in the moonlight. (But it is her, not her sister.)_

_Your heart skips a beat but then you remember that you begged them to leave because you thought you had smallpox. You did not have smallpox, and you did not have the violent Spanish flu that burned through your hometown while you were away at school, which was your second guess- you apparently had only a severe head cold. You’re primarily a chemist, and definitely not a medical doctor._

_Still, you’re certain the others didn’t want to catch colds either, so it’s probably still wise to have let them go. Although in retrospect you could have asked WX-78 to stay._

_"He wakes," Wendy says to her flower._

_You feel terribly weak and you lie back down on the straw. You wish you had taken more than one year of human anatomy and physiology, then you might know why… although it’s probably just because you’ve been lying here for days and not eating very much._

_You had a lot of time to think._

_"How much food do we have?" you ask her._

_"Little. And there is none nearby to be found."_

_She’s been stuck with you, hasn’t she? “I can make it on my own if you want to leave now.”_

_She twirls her flower in her hand. “I have little more chance on my own. Food is scarce. Winter approaches.”_

_You sit up. “In that case, maybe you’d like to help me conduct an experiment.”_

_"Science is bor-" She checks herself._

_You sense that she nearly said something vile._

_"All right," she says instead. "It will pass the time before we meet death."_

_You would like to lie down again but you will need to travel soon if you intend to carry out your plans, and you may as well ease into being upright. “Have you seen the gravestones around here?”_

_"Several."_

_"Have you seen any with your name?"_

_She nods. “I believed it to be a cruel jest by the one who trapped us here.”_

_You have assumed the same, up until now._

_There’s a blank headstone a little ways away from here. She helps you to it. You set down your backpack with your notes inside. One is a note explaining what happened, in case Wendy is found near you with a bloody ax, and another note is to Wendy, giving her permission to eat your corpse if she needs to. The other notes are to be left where they are._

_You hold the ax to your throat. You know you’re not capable of going the distance required to find food, and you have no intention of suffering slow starvation. You’re weaker than Wendy and you have a hypothesis to prove, so if one of the two of you has to go, it may as well be you._

_You can’t do it. Whether it’s from weakness or a mental block against suicide, you don’t know. You don’t consider this suicide, because you’ll be dead either way- but your arm might not know that._

_Wendy’s voice is sweet. “Do you need help finding death?”_

_You nod. She takes the ax._

_You remember too late that she doesn’t have much upper body strength and can’t kill anything quickly._

You wake with a shuddering breath, curled on your side, unable to move for several minutes. 

Willow is sleeping. Good, you want to do this alone.

The place from your (dream?) exists, and it is not far away. Here is the headstone that now bears your name and here is the backpack. Inside are the notes.

_Dear reader,_

_My name is Wilson P. Higgsbury. I can only prove that I have been here for eighteen days, but I suspect I have been here much longer._

_I propose that it is impossible to truly die here. Regardless of the manner of death, the deceased will simply return to this place with memories erased, although of late my erasure of memory has begun to erode, leading me to believe that these memories may have merely been repressed by my own psyche, due to the horror these memories contain._

_If this is true, my remains will be found in this grave, possibly by my own future self._

Your voice is small and crackly when you speak to the silent woods. 

"But I remember getting out of here."


End file.
